The present invention is directed to techniques for identifying one or more devices that transmit wireless signals.
Systems are currently available to monitor over-the-air energy associated with transmissions or emissions of devices in order to determine the types of devices that may be active in a particular locale. See, for example, commonly assigned U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,850,735 B2; 7,035,593 B2; and 7,116,943 B2. These systems face challenges in environments where there are numerous devices transmitting at the same time and in the same frequency band, such as an unlicensed band defined in FCC part 15. For example, consider a radio receiver device that receives signals from an unknown device that operates using a frequency hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) protocol. The signal packets from a FHSS device jump around to different frequencies. Consequently, when there are numerous devices operating at the same time, it can become difficult to know when the signal packets are from a single device that operates using FHSS or whether there are multiple fixed-frequency devices. The situation becomes more complex when there are multiple devices that are transmitting and those devices use very similar communication protocols.
What is needed is a technique for identifying wireless devices in an environment where multiple devices are operating at the same time using a variety of signal protocols, such as a FHSS protocol and an asynchronous fixed-frequency protocol.